


And Presents Under the Tree

by MarleyMortis



Series: Bucky Barnes Starts A Family [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fatherhood, Heart Transplant, Hospitalization, M/M, Major surgery, New Parents, open heart surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 01:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9412070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarleyMortis/pseuds/MarleyMortis
Summary: Peggy Carter goes into labor and is rushed to the hospital to deliver.  Complications with the birth happen, and Bucky remembers the last time he was in this hospital while a loved one battled for their life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is some angst in this story that involves medical conditions. Be aware if you're sensitive to that.
> 
> Thanks to [Nostalgia-in-Starlight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseEndingParadox/pseuds/Nostalgia-in-Starlight) for suggesting we see more of Steve's medical history.

You'd think that figuring out how to live after someone's nearly died would be easy, right? Seems like it would make a person more grateful for the things in their life, more eager to explore new experiences, but Bucky couldn't shake the feeling of dread that covered him like a death shroud. It was worse knowing how his lethargy affected Steve, who was basically a special kind of unicorn snowflake who deserved all the best things in life. He certainly didn't deserve the wreck who had been sent home in place of Bucky Barnes, childhood sweetheart and all around fun-loving guy.

It wasn't that he was unhappy. Living with one arm was an annoyance that ranked up there with gnats; it irritated the shit out of him some days and seemed like no big deal on others. It was that he was lost. He'd joined the army right out of high school, had been keen to follow in the footsteps of his granddad, who had been a famous soldier back in World War II and who he was named after.

Soldiering was all he'd ever wanted to do. Sure, it had come with untold hardships. Being away from Steve so much had been awful, but before he'd been actively deployed to the Middle East, they'd spent a good three years moving around the world to various bases while renting out the brownstone they'd purchased early in their marriage. The military had afforded them the benefits to take care of Steve's healthcare needs. It had helped to pay for Steve's education.

All that had gone up in smoke the moment that IED had gone off. In one fell swoop, his career was over, the benefits afforded to active combatants was over, snuffed out like a candle. Having to rebuild his life at the age of twenty-eight—he'd stalled as a sergeant; it was much harder to be promoted than it had been back after 9/11—seemed a daunting prospect.

Bucky had known it was gonna be one of those days the moment he'd opened his eyes to a dull throbbing in the back of his head, but he'd managed to get Steve out the door and to the office without letting on it was a no good very bad day. Keeping it from Clint, however, proved ineffective. They had spent years in the desert together and could read each other like open books.

He did not particularly like it when the corporal—honorably discharged—shuffled him to the sofa, brought him a heating pack for his head, and draped a warm, wet cloth over his eyes that smelled of lavender. It was easy to scoff at the hippie bullshit Clint got up to these days with essential oils. Walking into that man's room was like walking into a Renaissance Festival where your nose was assaulted with two dozen varieties of burning incense sticks the second you entered the gates.

When that didn't work, his companion forced him to sit up in order for Clint to monkey around behind him until he was sitting between the man's outstretched legs. The fact that he bitched and moaned about it did nothing to deter his self-appointed caregiver. 

He had to eat his words when the man proceeded to massage fingers smelling of peppermint over the back of his neck and up into his hairline. Between the scent wafting into his airways and the skilled fingers kneading his muscles, he found himself surrendering. He became a lump of clay and Clint the potter kneading him into shape. Maybe there was something to his buddy's hippie bullshit after all.

Later, when he was stretched out on the sofa on top of a heating pad, he allowed himself to drift. Clint read aloud from a Wizard of Oz book, the man's soothing voice somehow grounding him in reality. That as when his phone chimed. He swatted his fingers in the device's general direction. When that didn't magically transfer the phone into his hands, he made baby seal noises.

Eventually, he whined hard enough for Clint to take pity on him.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Steve.”

“Well, what does he want?”

“Oh nothing much. Peggy's in labor.”

“What?” He snapped into a seated position.

“Angie and Gabe are taking her to the hospital. Steve is leaving the office now.”

“Peggy's in labor.” The news knocked around inside his suddenly empty head, a pong ball bouncing around an Atari screen.

“Yes. Peggy is presently racing to the hospital to give birth to your child.”

“I should--” The weight of impending fatherhood suddenly landed on him. “Oh God, she's giving birth. I have to get to the hospital! Steve will never forgive me if I don't make it in time.”

Bucky hadn't learned how to drive with one arm yet. Theoretically, he could, but given his earlier headache on top of the panic of Peggy going into labor, it meant driving would be no mas pantalones. Thank God for Clint Barton. The ride to the hospital was one of the scariest of his life, though, as Clint had a terrible habit of driving like a madman while singing White Zombie's _Dragula._

By the time they made it, Bucky's knuckles were white from clutching the “Oh Shit” handle and possibly from seeing his life flash before his eyes. Again. Also? Maybe from a touch of nausea due to weaving between cars during rush hour traffic. In short, they had almost died, and he needed to seriously look into retrofitting the car to make it easily assessable to a one-armed driver because wild horses couldn't drag him into a vehicle with Clint Barton behind the wheel again.

Peggy had already been assigned a delivery room when he made it into the maternity ward. The nurses at the central nursing station cooed at him for reasons he didn't feel like fitting together. Something about the Barnes baby and how adorable Steve and Bucky were together. He wasn't really paying attention at that point and darted down the hall to the appropriate room.

Equal parts joy and dread painted Steve's face when Bucky stepped into the room. His husband leaped from a chair pulled up next to Peggy's bed and hurried to hug him. “I'm so glad you're here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“You were having a bad morning when I left. I thought you might...”

“What? Not come? She's our daughter, Stevie. Long as Pegs here doesn't change her mind.”

“Oh please. This child has spent nine months sitting on my bladder and kicking my insides. Believe me, you can have her once she deigns to come out.” The fondness with which Peggy rubbed her swollen womb belied the resentment of her words.

“How are you?” He approached the side of her bed and reached to take her hand.

“Feel like my insides are poised to fall out of my vagina, but seeing the happiness on your faces is enough to make the whole ordeal worth it.”

“Comin' through!” yapped Angie. “Ice chips for my baby.” The younger woman presented a spoon laden with ice chips to Peggy's mouth. “She's not allowed to drink anythin'. Otherwise she could pee on Junior's head while she's pushin'.”

Bucky snickered. “Long as it's not number two. Then we'd have to name her Poopy-Head.”

“Ugh. Can you two be any more gross?” complained Steve. “Where's Clint? He'll understand.”

“Parking the car. He'll be up shortly.”

Gabe bustled in next, sporting a tripod and camera which he began setting up in a corner of the room. Once it was ready, he broke away and moved forward to hug Steve and Bucky and congratulate them on their impending parenthood. If the man sounded slightly resentful about the whole thing, Bucky chalked it up to his state of mind rather than Peggy and Angie's refusal to have any more children.

“What's up with the camera?” he asked.

“Pegs says this'll be the only time she ever gives birth. Figured I would record it for posterity and so you can show your boys and girls back in Afghanistan.”

“That's really thoughtful, Gabe. Thanks. I'm sure the rest of the squad will be delighted to see six pounds of baby splitting open some hapless woman's vajayja. Let's hope she doesn't hemorrhage. Then there'll be blood spraying everywhere while her body is torn asunder.”

“Bucky!” exclaimed Steve.

Peggy merely cackled, a sound which morphed into a groan come the onset of another contraction. When the last of the pain faded, she eased her grip on Angie's hand. “I have no intention of ever going through the stress of a newborn and have discovered that being pregnant, while some women genuinely seem to enjoy it, terrifies me. If we have children, it will be through adoption.”

“I can't have kids,” Angie proclaimed. “Bad endometriosis. The chances of me ever conceiving are slim to none. That's okay, though. I'm pretty grossed out by the thought of something living growing inside my uterus. Pegs is a real champ for doing this.”

“She is,” agreed Steve. He smoothed Peggy's hair back from her forehead and kissed her there despite the sweat. There was nothing glamorous about delivering an infant.

The next several hours were a trial of hurry up and wait. Peggy stalled out at seven centimeters, her cervix refusing to open that last three centimeters that would have allowed her to push the child into the world, and it was also the only reason she finally agreed to an epidural. The pain of successive contractions finally wore her down enough that having a needle jammed into her spine was preferable to suffering through another pelvic-splitting contraction.

They were hovering right around the ten hour mark when her obstetrician came back for another check-up. The woman who entered behind him, who was introduced as Dr. Jane Foster, studied the heart monitor connected to the baby. A crease formed between her eyebrows.

“Looks like the baby isn't doing as well as we would like. Her heart rate is elevated, which could be from the stress of labor or an indication of something more significant. We'll watch her carefully over the next hour, and if the baby's heart rate doesn't settle, we'll need to do an emergency C-section.”

Steve was immediately on his feet, face a mask of fear. “How bad is it? Can we safely wait that long, or will waiting put her at risk of complications?”

“The arrhythmia isn't dangerous at this point. It's high enough for us to be concerned, though.”

Tension jolted through Bucky, and he got up to settle his hand against Steve's back to rub small, soothing circles into his muscles. “I'm the biological father, but my husband is a heart transplant recipient. Anything to do with her heart rate being elevated will make him nervous.”

“We're still all right. This is just something we need to watch out for.”

Naturally, there was no consoling Steve after having that information dumped on them. Bucky tried everything from holding him to singing softly and offering his husband a place to hide his face. Nothing could keep him still, though. Of course, it was completely understandable. He'd been an absolute mess their senior year when Steve had been rushed into the ICU. Steve's ma had been forced to home school Steve for the remainder of the year, as he'd been too sick to leave the hospital.

So it was actually something of a relief when the pediatric specialist finally called it and rushed Peggy into the OR for a cesarean section. Determining who got to go in as Peggy's support, though, was something of a crapshoot. In the end, Bucky was nominated, as no one was sure Steve could handle the situation without breaking down given his closeness to the problem.

Steve helped him into a gown and a mask while the anesthesiologist prepped Peggy. He would have hugged his husband, who was looking abjectly miserable, except he didn't want to transfer Steve's germs onto the sterile gown.

“Just breathe, okay? Everything's gonna be all right.”

“You can't promise me that.”

“No, but the baby's fully developed, and Peggy is strong.” Bucky fished through Steve's pocket and found his mother's rosary, which he pressed into his husband's hands. He might not be religious, but Steve would find comfort in the routine of prayer. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

A nurse whisked him into the operating room, at which point, he took a stool next to Peggy's head, wrapping her hand in his and bringing it to his lips.

“How's he doing?” she asked. Peggy Carter's gift for being calm in the face of panic was legendary.

“'Bout as well as you could expect.”

Dr. Foster and her colleague, Dr. Hussain, came in scrubbed up and ready for delivery, and then it became a game of supporting Peggy when all he wanted to do was look beyond the curtain blocking their view of the operation to make sure things were going smoothly. As far as tense moments in his life, having his daughter cut out of her mother's uterus ranked up there with staring an enemy Afghan in the face over drawn guns, but the army had taught him how to deal with stress.

So he kissed Peggy's forehead and amused her as best he could with tales of the squad, with tales of Wakanda passed down through T'challa and his country's worship of a panther god. He told her stories about Wanda's Sokovian family and growing up with a welder for a father and a Romani mother and the love/hate relationship between her parents.

Before they knew it, Dr. Foster announced the baby was safely out of the womb. Then, through the paper separating them, they heard a sharp, feeble cry. Hearing that cry was enough to make him squeeze his eyes closed with relief. It wasn't until the nurses failed to have him cut the umbilical cord and didn't bring their daughter around for Peggy to look at that he realized something was wrong.

He glanced helplessly between Peggy and the back corner where they'd whisked the baby, but she calmly waved him away, giving silent permission for him to investigate.

Dr Foster worked furiously around the table set aside to receive the infant. God, she was small, probably less than six pounds, and she was much too still. The only reason he knew she was still alive was the occasional flex of a tiny hand in amongst all the equipment she was being hooked up to.

Eventually, the pediatric specialist urged him closer, and he approached.

“You can touch her hand,” Dr. Foster indicated.

He did, smoothing his fingers over the delicate skin of the baby's knuckles. “What's wrong with her?”

“We don't know for certain yet. Her oxygenation is quite low, her heart rate too high, and I'm hearing a heart murmur. It indicates a defect in the heart, most likely a hole either in the atrial or ventricular areas of the heart. We're taking her to the NICU for tests and an MRI.”

Emotion got clogged in Bucky's throat even as his daughter curled her little fingers around his much larger one. “Is it my fault? Something in my genetics?”

“There's no indication these defects are genetic. The left and right sides of the ventricles and atrium are connected during fetal development. Over time, walls form, which we call a septum, to separate either side of the heart. Sometimes, there's a hole or the septum doesn't completely form.”

“When will we know more?”

“I'll let you know as soon as I do. We have a very sick little girl on our hands, but we'll do everything in our power to make sure she's all right. You and your husband can come by the NICU any time to sit with her if you like.”

“Thank you. I should go talk to my husband and Peggy.”

He skimmed his thumb across his baby's near-translucent skin and kissed her forehead before nurses shuttled her into an incubator and hurried her from the operating room. The only thing that marked her as a Barnes was a little tag abound her ankle with his name and an RFID chip. Someone snagged him to put a similar tag around his own wrist containing the same information.

After checking on Peggy, he stepped out into the waiting room. Steve stood at the corner looking forlorn and more than a little lost, no doubt having seen their daughter rushed away. He approached his husband and rubbed a hand over the man's back. Steve jumped but turned to cling to him.

“How bad is it?”

“They don't know yet.” He relayed the information Dr. Foster had given him.

It didn't take long for Peggy to get out of surgery and be moved to post-op. Angie and Gabe shooed them along to the NICU with assurances they would be down to check on things once Peggy was settled. Gabe hugged Bucky and apologized for his earlier snippy episode.

They hadn't really finalized a name, so when a nurse from the NICU sought them out to record the information for the baby's birth certificate, they had a bit of a conundrum on their hands.

“Petunia Ruby Jamesonni Eunice Barnes?” Steve asked.

“Never. I love my brothers and sisters in arms, but there are some things I draw the line at. Sarah?”

Steve shook his head. “That name's always gonna be associated with a whole lot of angst. I don't wanna saddle our daughter with all the grief still attached to her grandmother's name.”

“Then something similar maybe? Seraphina?”

“Seraphina Barnes.” Steve nodded his approval. “Seraphina Brigid Barnes.”

Bucky curled his arm around his husband's waist and nodded to the nurse to agree with Steve's selection. They peered through the window into the dim interior of the NICU and watched the infants there struggle to cling to life. Seraphina was near the back of the room.

After a while, nurses came to get them so they could visit. He watched Steve slip his hands into the ports on the incubator and trace her tiny hand, tears dripping from the man's chin as he met their daughter for the first time. This was his family. Their family.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seraphina Barnes goes for open heart surgery, leaving Bucky to remember the last time he was in a hospital waiting to see if a loved one would survive.

“Ventricular Septal Defect,” Dr. Foster announced once she'd settled into a chair across from theirs. “Sometimes these defects can close on their own, but Seraphina's is considerably larger than most. Her heart is enlarged, and she's already exhibiting symptoms of heart failure.”

“What do you recommend?” Bucky asked.

Steve, by that point, had gone monosyllabic, especially given his own history with heart disease. That meant it was up to Bucky to take the lead, to hold himself together. That was always the way. Steve broke down; Bucky stepped up. Bucky broke down; Steve filled the gap.

“We'll need to perform open heart surgery and patch the defect.”

“You can't use a catheter to go through her veins and close it without a major operation?”

“The hole is too large. Once we hook her up to a heart lung bypass machine, we'll open the chest wall. We'll then take a piece of artery and use it to patch the hole. That will prevent oxygenated blood from mixing with non-oxygenated blood. The procedure could take upwards of six hours. She'll also need to be on several medications before and after the operation to prevent infection and manage her pain.”

“How long will she be hospitalized?”

“She'll be kept in the NICU for two to four days following the procedure and then be transferred into a regular ward where she'll stay for a further five to seven days. As long as everything goes well, we'll then release her to recuperate at home under your care.”

His only hand was employed in rubbing Steve's back, so he couldn't fidget while asking the questions written down on his list. There were a lot to get through. Dr. Foster was remarkably patient, and answered everything calmly. It didn't abate their worry; nothing would except taking a healthy daughter home, but it went a long way in empowering them with knowledge.

They didn't even need to discuss the situation, as it was either open heart surgery or death at that point, so they quickly signed the necessary consent forms and got into gowns to visit Seraphina before the surgery. He was starting to hate the NICU. It felt claustrophobic being surrounded by so much suffering where there should be happiness.

Their daughter was small and fragile. She looked considerably less vibrant than yesterday when she'd come out of Peggy's womb. A nurse indicated it was because she wasn't oxygenating properly. They also kept her sedated, adding to the lethargic appearance. Between that and all the tubes hooked up to her, there was no denying how brittle her grasp on life was.

The rest of the Barnes family awaited them outside, and Steve walked immediately into Winifred’s arms. George, meanwhile, clasped a hand on Bucky's shoulder. Words wouldn't fix the situation, so no one bothered, although he did glance over once to find Ma helping Steve pray through the rosary. Bucky, at one point, joined them out of deference to his husband if for no personal reason.

Then there was nothing to do but wait. Wait to find out if their daughter would live. Just like he'd waited an agonizing five and a half hours to find out if the love of his life would live through transplant surgery. This was terrifying. The heart transplant had been terrifying. Waiting sixty days to find out if the love of his life would last long enough for a donor heart to be found? That had been something altogether more terrifying, and if he never had to live through it again, it would be too soon.

After watching nurses transfer Seraphina from the NICU to the operating room, he went back to staring at the floor, legs braced apart, elbows resting on knees with his dad's hand a comforting weight on his back. Time shifted around them as he was pulled back to an earlier crisis.

________________________________________

_“Steve. Stevie, look at me.” Bucky knelt beside his boyfriend and lifted a blonde head from the gravel to cushion it against Bucky's thigh. Everything had been fine. Steve had been having a rare string of good days up until a friendly game of touch football had led to his boyfriend fainting._

_It didn't help matters that Steve's pulse felt fluttery or that his skin had taken on a bluish hue. “Someone call an ambulance!” he shouted over the din of concerned teens._

_Bucky had enough sense to call Steve's ma before EMTs loaded his boyfriend into the back of an ambulance. He hopped on with them for the trip to the hospital. At some point, Steve's heart stopped beating, which sent the paramedics into a scramble to get it restarted._

_He didn't even feel the tears on his face until a drop clinging to his nose tickled him. All he did was dash it away. They wouldn't even let him hold Steve's hand on the journey._

_Once they arrived, they shuttled Steve into the ER and left Bucky standing in a fog until a nurse finally directed him to the ER waiting room, which was packed with people in various states of misery. That was where Sarah Rogers found him when she rushed, her expression stricken, into the ER from the surgical ward where she worked as an anesthesiologist._

_He explained what had happened the best of his ability, but then there was nothing to do but wait. Another nurse brought them each a coffee and crouched in front of Sarah where they spoke in hushed tones, the woman wishing Steve a speedy recovery._

________________________________________

“Have you eaten, Son?” George asked.

“I don't think I could stomach anything right now.”

“Buck, you need to keep your strength up. Why don't we go to the cafeteria and see if anything looks good?” His father's soothing Brooklyn drawl was distinct, reminded him of men like Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones. You couldn't mistake the voices of those men for anyone else. It came with a certain amount of soothing as Bucky remembered all the prepubescent angst calmed by that voice.

“Yeah. Okay.”

The walk to the cafeteria helped a little, got him away from the same four walls and bland art he'd been staring at for the past twenty-four hours. He breathed a little easier. How could the air in one particular area feel so stale? The OR waiting room was like breathing in pea soup.

“I been in hospitals way too much,” Bucky eventually said as they were in line. He toyed with a container of fresh fruit before selecting an avocado salad and some nuts. “Steve can't eat that, Dad.” He indicated the mac 'n cheese and steered him toward a fresh veggie tray with hummus. “Stop looking at me like that. Steve would tear out his tongue before eating pasta and fake cheese.”

George just looked at him like he was weird as Hell.

“Haven't you ever watched him eat at family dinner?”

“Your ma always takes care of that sort of thing.”

“Steve only eats fresh fruit and veg, whole grains, and chicken or fish. Sometimes eggs and turkey. If he doesn't, his body makes him shit his brains out his ass. I've been married to this man for ten years. How do you not know this about him?”

“What about your wedding cake? I distinctly remember you shoving a slice of cake in his mouth.”

“It was made with coconut flour, Dad. He can't eat gluten.”

“That was made with coconut flour? That was just about the best cake I've ever eaten.”

“Yeah, well, come to our house for breakfast some time.”

They gathered their purchases in a reusable shopping bag to head back upstairs. Before entering, Bucky took a huge breath that wasn't filled with the static of fear and worry. Steve and Ma were in the same position in which they'd left them. Clint was catching some shut eye in a chair. Angie and Gabe had gone down to visit with Peggy.

Bucky sat down on the floor in front of Steve and attempted to get him to eat something as the clock ticked down the minutes toward what they could only pray was good news.

________________________________________

_“Darling, you need to eat something,” Sarah murmured, a delicate hand sitting between his shoulder blades as though simple contact could make the world start spinning on its normal axis again._

_“I can't, Ma,” murmured Bucky. “Not until I know...”_

_Thankfully, it wasn't much longer before a doctor emerged and sat in a chair opposite theirs. He looked impassive, stoic, like the fact that Steve Rogers' life was balanced in his hands made no difference to him, which meant Bucky hated him on principle._

_“I'm Dr. Strange, and I've been handling your son's condition. His EKG came back with a significant anomaly. What we know at present is that his arrhythmia has increased. I'm detecting a crackle when listening to the heart, and there's considerable swelling in his joints, abdomen and veins. This suggests Steven is going into heart failure.”_

_“Heart failure?” shouted Bucky while lurching to his feet. “Oh God. Heart failure? Fuck.” He speared fingers into his over-long hair and gripped it at the root._

_“I'm ordering X-rays and cardiac catheterization, which should give us a better idea of what we're dealing with, but cardiomyopathy would be on my short list of possibilities.”_

_“Whatever you need to do, Doctor.”_

_Bucky had stopped paying much attention after “heart failure.” He paced the length of the waiting room, unable to calm the rapid thud of his own heart. What if that was a thing? What if his heart could feel Steve's heart? What if he could take part of Steve's illness into his own body? He would do it without a second thought because Steve deserved so much more than his body allowed._

_He didn't realize he was crying until a harsh sob wrenched his shoulders. “I have to--” Breath stuttered into his lungs. “I need to get some air.” He turned this way and that, his body looking for the exit without his brain giving it a direction. “I have to get some air. I have to get out of here.”_

_“Okay, baby. Let's get you outside.” Sarah cupped his elbow and guided him through the exit. A wall of hot, summer air hit them in the face when they emerged._

_Furious steps paced him up and down the sidewalk before he stopped suddenly. He turned to Sarah, vision blurred from all the tears begging to be released. “He can't die, Ma. He can't.”_

_“I know, baby. Come here.”_

_He stepped into her waiting arms._

_Later, his parents rushed into the ER, at which point, his dad hauled him off Sarah's lap to envelope him inside big, strong arms. The scent of his dad's familiar aftershave settled over him like a warm blanket, and he lost it all over the man's chest._

________________________________________

Bucky's phone vibrated in his pocket, so he passed the veggie tray off to Ma so she could continue coaxing Steve into putting something on his stomach while Bucky walked across the room to answer the incoming call. T'challa's face flashed across the screen.

“Barnes.”

“Sarge, we just heard about the baby. Is t'ere anyt'ing you need?” The man's Wakandan accent was lyrical with a touch of British in the emphasis on his T's and the precise pronunciation of words.

“Chai,” the name whispered from his mouth. “It's good to hear your voice.” Chai was the big brother of the unit, calm, unflappable, always good to have around in a crisis.

“We are praying for you and Steve.”

“Thanks.” He spent the next ten minutes filling the man in on where they stood, telling him that Seraphina was currently in surgery and that there had been no news since she'd been taken back by the NICU nurses. Steve and him, meanwhile, were doing as well as could be expected, and they had family there as a support system.

“The best t'ing you can do, Sarge, is to stay calm and hopeful. I know t'at is hard, but the more hopeful you are, the calmer the environment is. She can feel t'at, you know. Kids, t'ey aren't good with understanding words, but t'ey sense t'ings better t'an adults.”

They talked for a while longer. It was the fist time he'd heard from the squad since the IED explosion, so there was a great deal to catch up on. Chai had been elevated to squad sergeant, and there was considerable relief knowing they hadn't brought in some outsider to lead his team, someone he didn't know and wouldn't trust to look after the people he most cared about.

Apparently, Lang and Reneau weren't speaking to each other. They'd had a silly fight over something as stupid as a pair of socks Reneau had received from home and were giving each other the silent treatment. Bucky told Chai to lock them in the latrine until they decided to play nice. Eventually, they wouldn't be able to ignore each other any longer and would fight it out.

Wanda was battling a serious case of homesickness that left her moping around the barracks during their off hours. The poor kid hadn't realized how hard it would be to spend so much time away from her twin, and it was hitting her extra hard given their shared upcoming birthday. It wasn't like you could rush home and spend the day with your family stateside. Your squad became your family. Bucky advised him about a book on the squad's shared e-reader that he should read to her.

They ended the call shortly thereafter, and he returned to his spot on the floor in Steve's line of sight. A glance at the clock showed the hands a mere fifteen minutes from where they'd been before the phone conversation. The waiting room had become his own personal Hell where time moved differently than the real world, where seconds became hours and hours became years measured by the amount of gray hair marching him toward the end of his life.

________________________________________

_Six. Six-Oh-One. Six-Oh-Two. Bucky got up. He drained the rest of his coffee. He paced the floor. He sat. Six-Ten. Six-Eleven. Bucky stood. He took the empty coffee cup and deposited it in the waste can. He paced the floor. His ma told him to stop pacing. He sat. Six-Fifteen. Six-Sixteen. Six-Seventeen. Bucky rolled to his feet. He walked outside. There was no one to bum cigarettes from. Smoking wasn't allowed on hospital grounds. He paced the sidewalk. He sat down on the curb and spent twenty-one minutes contemplating life without Steve Rogers in it._

_Six-Thirty-Eight. Six-Thirty-Nine. He shuffled back inside. He flopped into the chair next to his father. He thought about ways he wouldn't have to live without Steve Rogers if his boyfriend died. He dragged in another stale breath of air. The baby across the room wailed for the millionth time._

_Seven-Fifteen. Bucky got up. He paced back to the vending machines. Got himself another coffee. Considered pouring the hot coffee all over the mother of the baby's head for not taking it outside. He drank the coffee. He shoved fingers into his hair._

_Eight-Thirty-seven. He got up to stretch his legs and went to the bathroom. When he came back, Dr. Strange was there. Nothing could stop him from running back across the waiting room to overhear what the doctor was telling Sarah._

_“Unfortunately, Mrs. Rogers, your son's condition has become end-stage. The previous medications prescribed by his physicians haven't helped, and his heart has become unable to function on its own.”_

_Sarah's calm disintegrated, which heralded the arrival of her tears. “There's nothing you can do?”_

_“Presently, we have him on several experimental medications, but they're so strong the chemicals will eventually shut down his kidneys and liver. We can keep him going, maybe for another couple of months, but once the medications build up, we won't be able to support his other bodily functions. I'm afraid the only route that ends in anything close to happiness is a heart transplant.”_

_Bucky sat down in the middle of the waiting room floor when his legs went out from under him._

_“Do you think he'll survive the transplant?”_

_“If we can get one soon enough, then he has a good chance, but you and I both know how long the waiting list for a heart is. You need to be prepared in the event we don't find a donor heart in time, and until then, he needs to be hospitalized in the ICU.”_

_George Barnes hurried over to peel his son off the floor, one of those bear-like arms around his waist the only support between standing and falling. “Cardiomyopathy,” his dad said. “Means the muscle of his heart is severely weakened.”_

_“Can we see him?” asked Bucky._

_“Nurses are getting him settled in the ICU right now. You can go up to the waiting room there, and when he's allowed visitors, a nurse will get you. I should warn you, though, that he's been sedated and is on a ventilator to keep his organs from over-working themselves.”_

_“I just wanna see him. Tell him how much he means to us.”_

________________________________________

Bucky got up. He paced the length of the waiting room. Harsh lights overhead brought back his headache from yesterday, and he wanted nothing more than to open up his cranium and remove everything inside to make things stop hurting. Clint must have noticed, as the guy came over with a vial of peppermint oil to massage into the back of his head. It helped almost immediately. Didn't take the pain away fully, but it dulled the sensation enough to be tolerable.

He paced back the other direction and would have screamed at the top of his lungs to somehow release some of the tension riding his shoulders if a nurse hadn't entered. Steve and he both scrambled over to greet her. The woman probably felt like a bull fighter being charged by two frothing beasts.

“Dr. Foster and Dr. Strange are about half-way through the surgery. Seraphina is holding up well. Her vitals are stable, and she's pulling through like a champ.”

“Dr. Strange?” Bucky asked.

“He's the cardiologist in charge of the surgery.”

________________________________________

_“Go home, Bucky. There's nothing for you to do here,” Dr. Strange said for the thirtieth time in as many days. There wasn't a day that went by that he wasn't at the hospital. Given Steve's tenuous grasp on life, the ICU allowed family for overnight stays in the event the patient died in the middle of the night, so he'd been staying over every other night, switching with Sarah, who had been granted an extended leave of absence to take care of her son._

_“Did that work yesterday?”_

_“Nope,” Strange responded._

_“Guess what? It isn't gonna work today either.”_

_The cardiologist looked at Steve's vitals and stepped out without another word._

_Bucky rested his head against the mattress right next to Steve's hip. No one could tell him honestly whether or not Steve knew he was there. Sometimes he swore there was something conscious about his boyfriend, as the days he stayed, Steve rested easier._

_He allowed his fingers to crawl across the bed so he could twine his pinkie around his boyfriend's. “Keep fighting, baby. Stay with me. Please. I can't do this without you. Just keep fighting.”_

________________________________________

Bucky got up to pace the waiting room again. Someone had dimmed the lights so people could sleep if they wanted. Angie and Gabe had returned from visiting Peggy and were slumped in the corner trying to get some shut eye. Peggy had even stopped by a while ago to sit with them.

Another glance at the clock assured him that time was still moving, even if it was moving at a different rate than the outside world. A second inside a hospital waiting room felt like days. It was like he could physically feel each tick of the second hand moving around the clock, like it resonated throughout the room, a triphammer slamming against metal.

Eventually, Steve came up to wrap arms around Bucky's waist.

Bucky leaned into the slight nuzzle of the man's face against the side of his head.

“Is this how you felt while waiting for my transplant?”

“No. Waiting for your heart was sixty days of Hell, but this is a taste of it.”

“You're so strong. I wouldn't have made it without you.”

“Same here, baby. Same here.”

________________________________________

_He woke from a nap to the soft murmur of other voices inside Steve's ICU room. Blearily, eyes gummed up with grit and gunk, he turned his attention toward Ma Rogers and Dr. Strange. Their voices were too low for him to hear, but whatever they were talking about, it wasn't a comforting conversation. Sarah seemed adamant about something. The cardiologist seemed just as bullheaded about his opinion._

_Bucky turned toward Steve instead. Sixty days in the drug-induced coma and having a ventilator breathe for him had taken its toll. His boyfriend's skin was so pale as to be nearly translucent, blonde hair limp and lifeless. What muscle he'd previously developed had atrophied. Even with the new heart, assuming they found one, the road to recovery would be long and arduous, and that was when he figured out what he was asking of Steve out of his own selfish co-dependence._

_Fat tears slid down his face. “Stevie, it's okay. If you need to go--” He pulled in a harsh breath. “If you're too tired to go on, if you need to, you can go. I'll be all right. I just want you to be happy. If that means going on to Heaven, then we'll get through it.”_

_Trembling fingers reached for the rosary resting on the table. He gathered them and tried to remember the sequence Steve used to pray. Starting with the crucifix, he began whispering the words he'd heard murmured so often. It wasn't that he suddenly believed there was a god listening. He knew better than that. No god would allow someone as good as Steve to go through this. So he wasn't praying with an expectation that his prayer would be heard. He prayed because Steve would have._

_A nurse suddenly barreled into the room. “We found one.”_

_Dr. Strange broke off conversation with Sarah. “Where?”_

_“Rhode Island. It's already been removed and is en route here. ETA: One hour thirty minutes.”_

_“And you're sure it's a match?”_

_“Positive.”_

_“Let's prep for surgery.”_

_Sarah grasped Bucky's shoulders and pulled him away from Steve's bed in order to give the nurses clear access. He couldn't stop trembling. Maybe it was shock, but he was determined he wouldn't become a patient and detract from his boyfriend getting the care he needed._

________________________________________

Six hours after the initial start of surgery, Dr. Strange entered the waiting room. His face was stoic and gave nothing away. He sat across from Steve and Bucky.

“Seraphina survived the surgery and has been moved to post-op.”

A collective gust of air filtered through the room as the tension ebbed. It was like they'd been falling for the past six hours, sure they would die upon impact only to land on the softest of clouds.

“How is she?”

“She handled the surgery better than expected. A nurse will come and take you to post-op so you can see her soon.” The doctor paused and looked closer at Steve. “Have we met?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, voice hoarse. “You helped save my life.”

________________________________________

_Dr. Strange stepped into the waiting room some five and a half hours after the heart had safely arrived. There was no telling how things had gone by his reaction. The man was cool as marble. He didn't bother sitting, just came to stand in front of them to say, “Steve survived the transplant. You'll be able to visit him soon, but he'll need to be weaned off the ventilator. We'll keep him sedated for a few more hours and then allow him to slowly return to consciousness.”_

_Sarah shot to her feet and hugged the cardiologist, thanking him profusely._

_Bucky could hardly form words enough to express his gratitude._

_On the day Steve turned eighteen, Bucky got down on one knee and proposed. Both their families had seen it coming from miles away and were there to cheer when Steve didn't hesitate to say yes._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seraphina comes home from the hospital, and Bucky learns how to be a caregiver.

Seraphina Brigid Barnes was born on May 26, 2017. Her doting fathers brought her home from the hospital on July 3, 2017 with a clean bill of health and after a terrifying bout of infection that had kept her hospitalized longer than expected. The car pulled up to the stoop, and Bucky emerged from the passenger seat before opening the back door. His ma beat him to it, so there followed a minor tantrum with Bucky insisting he could get his own infant out of the back seat.

Ma meant well, of course, but he needed to get used to taking care of the baby without someone to rely upon, one-armed or not. So he struggled with the seat belt to release the infant car seat. Then he snapped the handle into position and eased her out. 

Seraph didn't particularly care for being jostled around—Dr. Strange said she might be a little sore yet from the surgery—so being lifted out startled a wail out of her. Of course, the wail only made her little chest hurt more and turned said wail into a full blown cry. He settled the car seat on the top step of the stairs leading up to the door and crouched to coo at her.

“Come on, baby, don't cry. See, you're all right.”

According to all the parent blogs he'd been reading, she was just on the cusp of developing a social smile. Before, all her grins had been a symptom of passing gas, which Clint had found ridiculously funny for reasons that involved Clint being a giant man-child. So when he made faces at her in an attempt to get her to calm down, her toothless mouth curved up in a smile.

“She smiled at me, Ma! Did you see that? That was an actual smile.”

“Pretty sure she was just passing gas, sweetheart.”

He shot his mother a look of betrayal. “Don't you listen to your mean old grams. You're a big enough girl now to decide when to smile on your own, aren't you?”

Carefully, he lifted her from the step and waited while his ma unlocked the front door. Taking her over the threshold for the first time didn't create a chorus of angels singing or bells ringing. It was just like any other time he'd entered the house, but it was also the first time he'd entered with their baby. It seemed like the moment should have been marked with something special.

They were all pretty exhausted from a month and a half shuttling back and forth to the hospital to spend time with Seraph, so he let his ma place the baby in her bassinet while Steve puttered around the kitchen making tea. Ma left after a while to let them get settled, at which point, both fathers dropped off to sleep sitting upright on the sofa. After all, all the handbooks said new parents should sleep while the baby slept because they were gonna need it.

A wail through the baby monitor startled them both awake.

Bucky lurched upright and flailed in an attempt to fight his way free of the blanket someone had draped over them, Clint he was hoping. Otherwise, they had bigger concerns to worry about than who was getting up with the baby. His glance flew to the clock. Midnight.

“I got it,” Steve murmured while rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Stretching, Bucky followed his husband upstairs, pausing to glance into Clint's bedroom to find their roommate conked out, his hearing aides sitting on the nightstand beside his bed. He strolled into the master bedroom to change into something more comfortable and turn down the covers before padding through the new doorway they'd knocked into the wall that led into the nursery. There, Steve was getting a bottle of formula from the mini-fridge and popping it into the electric warmer.

Soft feelings fluttered through his chest while watching father and daughter, Steve scooping Seraph from her bassinet and resting her in the crook of his arm, the sounds the baby made when she latched to the nipple and nursed. It filled him with a sudden rush of love and protective instinct. This was his family. He would do everything in his power to protect them. A smile warmed his expression.

Said smile threatened to evaporate throughout the night.

Two in the morning, he jumped up and scrambled into the nursery in an effort to quiet the baby before she woke Steve. Trying to maneuver and feed her with one arm was an exercise in frustration and ultimate failure, as Clint scuffed the hardwood with his bare feet to come in and help.

Four had him murmuring to his husband to go back to sleep so he could attempt to do it all over again, this time with a diaper change thrown on top of the feeding.

Six A.M.

Six-thirty A.M.

Seven-fifty A.M.

It got to the point where he just sat in the rocking chair beside the bassinet because lying back down and being woken shortly thereafter was worse than sitting up all night.

Eight o'clock, Steve's alarm went off, and he shuffled his ridiculously adorable bedhead into the nursery while rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Shiit...ake mushrooms. Did you get any sleep at all?”

“Sleep is for child-free individuals,” he said, voice rough, arm stretched into the bassinet so he could rub lazy, comforting circles over Seraph's chest and belly. “Think she had a tummy ache.”

“I can see that.” Steve's glance lingered on the spit-up stains all down Bucky's chest.

“Can't burp her with one arm 'less she's sittin' on my lap and leanin' on my stomach.”

“Here, I'll take over while you get cleaned up.” Steve waited until Bucky moved to flop into the rocker, face squirreling up in a sour look when Seraph immediately started whimpering without Bucky touching her.

“You gotta get ready for work, baby.”

“Later,” he said through a yawn. “Later. Go change. Angie knows I'm gonna be a little late.”

A hot shower went a long way toward rousing him. Dressed, he padded downstairs to get started on breakfast. Nothing special. He whipped up a quick egg white omelet and a couple of pieces of whole grain toast, quickly setting the table while Steve came padding down with Seraph snuggled in her baby seat looking like a regular angel.

“Smells good,” he murmured, both arms winding around Bucky's waist.

Bucky leaned his jaw into the brush of his husband's lips.

“Last night got me thinking about what Logan said down at the VA.”

“Yeah?”

“About the program offering advanced prosthetic limbs for veterans? Clint needed to get up and help me feed her. If I'm gonna take care of a baby, I need two hands.”

His husband leaned back against the counter. “If that's what you want, then I support your decision, but don't pressure yourself into doing something you aren't ready for. You'll adjust to taking care of her. One night shouldn't be used as evidence that you're incapable of it.”

“It's just-- You're the one working. That means caring for the baby should fall to me. You need your sleep, and when Clint moves out, and we lose that extra income--”

Steve cradled his face between two hands. “Think about tomorrow. Think about the day after that. Bee-Bear, you have this awful habit of thinking of things on a cosmic level.”

He wanted to be angry with Steve for criticizing him but couldn't. Steve had his number on this one. Falling up the stairs on his first day of junior high hadn't ruined his day, in his mind. It had made him a pariah amongst society and would affect the rest of his life. His first job? Cleaning up shit at a kennel hadn't been something to do for the summer. He swore he'd be cleaning up dog shit the rest of his life. Could he work a register at a convenience store for a few months after high school? Sure. But he'd been convinced he would be doing it the rest of his life. Same thing with the baby, he supposed. He couldn't take things one day at a time which meant he needed to solve all his problems on day one.

Which was not how life worked over the next few months, but he'd be damned if he told Steve he had been right that day standing in their kitchen after a hard night of newborn issues. He did get better. He did adjust to handling Seraphina with only one arm. By the end of the month, he could change her diaper in under seven minutes. He could feed her by resting her head in the crook between his stump and his body, leaving his remaining arm free to work the bottle. Clint helped him learn how to maneuver her against his shoulder and pat her back with his hand to burp her.

And that was the thing. He'd always been shit with improvisation until thrown into the deep end to swim with the sharks, but he was slowly getting the hang of it. It wasn't long before Bucky Barnes became a Seraphina Barnes whisperer and was teaching Steve tricks to make his life as a father easier.

“Steve, can you get the baby's shoes on? Seraphina has an appointment with her pediatrician this morning, and I have to get the load out of the dryer if I'm wearing a clean shirt to this thing.”

“Sure thing, Bee-Bear.”

Bucky jogged down to the basement with the laundry basket to take out the load. He didn't bother folding the clothes right that moment and instead located a dark button down to shrug into. And if he left a post-it note on the laundry basket asking Clint to do it, well, Clint's drying herbs were stinking up the basement, so he deserved to contribute.

By the time he made it back upstairs, it was to find Seraph wailing and Steve fumbling with the tiny laces on her baby shoes. Panic edged the man's expression.

“Baby, those are the shoes Chai sent in the mail. They're not for actual wearing.”

“Then why do we have them?”

“You try telling Sergeant Udaku he doesn't know anything about babies and shouldn't send gifts.”

“Point.”

“Put on the sage shoes with the velcro straps. Velcro is my friend.” He indicated his empty sleeve.

Bucky loaded their daughter into her car seat and left before Angie stopped by to pick up Steve. They had since altered the car's steering column to include a knob that made it easier for Bucky to steer and relocated all the necessary controls onto the right side of the wheel. It meant he was more independent than he had been in the months following his discharge.

Everyone knew him at the pediatrician's office. He'd been that one parent who freaked out whenever his daughter so much as sneezed and rushed her into the office for a check-up. He never did figure out if Steve had been laughing at him or had been driven to hysterics himself.

And every time they made it to the office, the nurses all remarked how much she looked like him. Her eyes were coming in the same dark shade of blue as his own, and she even had a little cleft in her chin that mirrored his own. He would have loved any child they adopted, but there was something about her looking like him that made his paternal instincts kick into overdrive.

Which was not the safest combination in the world. An ex-soldier with his own emotional issues hopped up on daddy hormones? It took him two months to leave the house without Seraphina, entrusting her into Clint's hands so Steve and him could go on a date. They came home to the baby reeking of lavender, chamomile, and carrier oil. Something about essential oils to make a baby sleep through the night. The only reason Clint didn't lose his hands was because the stuff actually worked and allowed Bucky and Steve to make love for the first time since the baby had been born.

When he woke up the next morning, body pleasantly sore from having Steve inside him the night before, he allowed Clint to explain how the oils worked and the sort of massage he'd employed in rubbing the oil into her skin. It came with a warning to stop using stuff on his baby without telling him before hand. He was pretty sure their roommate didn't listen to his warning.

He was sitting on the sofa one evening, the baby tucked into her downstairs bassinet so he could keep an eye on her and the tablet on his lap that was open to an infant developmental website, when Steve got in from work. His husband removed his jacket to hang in the hall closet and flopped down on the sofa beside him, fingers untangling the tie around his throat.

“Good day?” Bucky asked.

“'Bout usual. We're ready to turn over information to Ms. Walters on Governor Lukin. We can prove he's been falsifying documents that give contracts from his own state of Texas to Roxxon Oil. He's the CEO of Roxxon. She might be able to bring charges against him.”

“When are politicians going to stop being scumbags?”

“When there's no money in politics.”

Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box that he settled on Bucky's knee.

“What's this?” He opened the box to find a necklace. A chunk of rainbow moonstone suspended from a sterling silver necklace rested inside.

“Just want you to know how great you are with Seraphina. So you can carry a piece of her with you always. Moonstone is one of the birth stones of June.”

Moisture pricked his eyes. He leaned over to kiss Steve. “Would you?”

His husband removed the necklace from the box and clasped it around his neck before dropping a quick kiss against his nape. “I love you so, so much.”

“Love you, too, baby.”

A few weeks later, he was out having lunch with Logan from down at the VA, who was a single father to a precocious toddler named Marie. Part of Marie's hair was snowy white from growing in without the proper pigmentation. They were chatting away, Seraph snuggled against Bucky's chest in a sling, when they got to talking about online resources for fathers. There just weren't a lot out there. Most sites presumed that women were the center of child care, so Logan suggested he start a blog.

When he got home that evening, he set up an account on a popular blogging website and got to work sharing his experiences over being the main caretaker of an infant. It surprised him how open people were to the concept and how interested they became about his techniques for care giving when he was an amputee. By the end of six months, he had twenty thousand followers and an Instagram account.

After the second year, he had an offer from a well-known publisher for the production of a line of books that were met with rave reviews. He and Seraph went on a nationwide book tour. There were interviews on popular daytime talk shows and news stations, a line of baby products he had a hand in designing, and a podcast that became known as Bucky Barnes Starts a Family.

He eventually did have to admit that Steve had been right about giving himself time to adjust.

Also? When he did eventually get a prosthetic, it was because he wanted it, not because he needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky, Seraph, and Steve will be back in a future installment.


End file.
